Alliesthesia (Template:GreekFont (alliós) - changed, and Template:GreekFont (aísthēsis) - sensation, perception ; French : alliesthésie, German : Alliästhesie) describes the dependence of the perception of pleasure or disgust perceived when consuming a stimulus on the "milieu intérieur" of the organism. Therefore, a stimulus capable of ameliorating the state of the interior milieu, will be perceived as pleasant. In contrary, a stimulus disturbing the milieu interne of the organism will be perceived as unpleasant or even painful. The sensation elicited therefore depends not only on the quality or on the intensity of the stimulus, but also on internal receptors, and is subjective.

The founder of the phenomenon of alliesthesia is the French physiologist Michel Cabanac. The first scientific publication from 1968[2] was succeeded by over 40 publications in international journals, for example: 1970 in Nature[3] and 1971 in Science.[4]
The term alliesthesia was first mentioned in the annex of Physiological Role of Pleasure and has been chosen in collaboration with the coauthor Stylianos Nicolaïdis. Originally, alliesthesia has been discovered by experiments in human subjects, and later been confirmed in rats (Rattus norvegicus).